THE executives of the Southern Basketball Community (SBC) League have taken strong action against Majesty Gardens for an incident, that left a referee with a bloodied head, at the end of their game against visiting Upper Room Church at the Majesty Gardens Court on Saturday.

For their part in the incident, Majesty Gardens will be suspended from taking any further part in tournaments or any other activities organised by the SBC until 2018.

Upper Room Church edged Majesty Gardens 61-59 to become the Western Divisional champions of the Community Basketball League following upon successes in the second and third games of the best-of-three finals.

The 2-1 victory over Majesty Gardens propelled Upper Room Church into the WorldNet Community Basketball finals where they will face Arnett Gardens Rockers in the best-of-five finals for the Howard McCatty Cup. Game one began at the Anthony Spaulding Sports Complex last evening.

The sanctions taken are as follow:

The Majesty Gardens team will not participate in the third-place play-off game and as such Exed Heats will be awarded third place.

Majesty Gardens and its members will forfeit all awards and incentives, if any, for which they were entitled.

The team’s court will not host any league games until 2017 and the said court will be on probation until the end of the 2018 season.

The team will pay a fine of $15,000. No player from Majesty Gardens may be transferred to another club; neither can the club enter any SBC/JABA-sanctioned event until said fine is paid.

The team must organise at least two properly constituted and recorded community sensitisation sessions that must be approved by the SBC before they are allowed to enter any league competition in the future.

The SBC in its quest to always seek reconciliation rather than the exclusion of its members will be working closely with the team with a view to improving relationships and community development.

The executive of the SBC and the majority of the people of the community wish to apologise firstly to the injured referee and to the general public for the occurrence of the incident.

— Hurbun Williams